Since the relative demise of Netscape as the last serious competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) three years ago, most of us simply take our Microsoft browser for granted--warts and all. Virtually every Web site is optimized for IE, and every copy of Microsoft Windows sold includes a version of IE. And with total market saturation come opportunists: criminal hackers who use Microsoft vulnerabilities to take control of your operating system, steal your identity, or spread spam.
But out of the ashes of Netscape came the Mozilla Organization. Spun off from AOL, which purchased Netscape a few years ago, the Mozilla Organization has been quietly creating a brand-new Internet browser from the ground up--and sharing its code with anyone and everyone. The benefit of this new browser project is that unlike IE, this open-source code runs independently of your operating system, so a flaw in the browser software won't necessarily expose your entire computer.

Another source of Internet vulnerabilities lies within ActiveX technology, tiny scripts that automatically download when you visit certain Web pages. In most cases, they're good, adding music or animation to a page. But in some cases, criminal hackers have tweaked the code to damage your computer. Microsoft recently added a prompt to IE so that you can accept or deny ActiveX scripts. Firefox doesn't use ActiveX technology, which means that a few Web sites might not appear as their designers intended (although we were hard-pressed to find a site that didn't work because of this during our testing of Firefox).

While Mozilla offers a whole suite of secure, independent, open-source Internet tools, it recently streamlined its browser component and named it Firefox. Since last summer, we've been testing Firefox, and, frankly, we're sold: Firefox is just as fast and just as easy as Internet Explorer--and more importantly, it's much more secure.

And feature by feature, Firefox either matches or surpasses IE.

*Going forward, Microsoft will upgrade only the versions of Internet Explorer running on Windows XP SP2. The last standalone version of Internet Explorer 6 will work on versions of Windows up through Windows XP SP1.

That's the problem with those web designers... they've got such a small mentality.... Gecko is the most standard compliant rendering engine... still they mess it up with their scripting , optmizing sites for IE alone...

I have been using opera due to its tabbed browsing feature and ofcorz the true xperience of speed.
But if 2marrow if Ie comes up with a version 7 which has similar features and page loading features then i wud not crib abt having to switch over to it.coz wen Firefox bcomes popular ( tat is systems totally relying on it & not in sheer numbers) and it surely will b as opera not free,it will surely have its own set of problems.
As for IE activex does have it own set of advantages (online games,app s/w et all tatz wat u use broadband for) .The only major prb is tha spyware issue virii will stay along with windows as long as u use the net.
Even mozilla has its own set of spyware like lop.com comet cursors etc only thing is they r far less rite now.
The bottom line use alternate browser till its good in comparision to ie.Why just bash IE coz its by MS.Ie will make ur money worth wen u pay 4 a OS like windows with its intigration to default web progs outlook 4 example .
If MS stops ie and the major browser s/w becomes paid (y not its neither ur dads nor mine).U may have 2 shell out more just 4 a browser.

xenkatesh:
Dude downloading/uploading that is quite fast in Firefox
comparing to other download managers .
Also it has Tabbed features dude.....

Click to expand...

Who says its aint fast overall.But its is arguable and i belive it too tat opera loads text faster than any other browser.Try it on this very site and see how the page loads in both opera and firefox.
MY point is why tha ie bash wen u use windows ??????

Firefox is really cool. I took me quite some time to leave ie.6(my beloved and safe, or so i thought) explorer but after long hours of reading people's views of firefox and opera here on the digit forum i must say iam pleasantly surprised after switching to this browser.
I believe firefoxie (courtesy dexter of course) will be(i.e. when i make up my mind to install it) will be even greater.

Opera is the best...after all opera introduced the concept of tabbed browsing(am I right?).It introduced many more features too.Like mouse gestures,integrated mail client,download manager etc.And many other browsers copied it.Another worthy feature of Opera is the Notes .Opera 7.54 's interface is just snazzy...
And Opera is faster than other browsers according to me.